With the continuous development of communication technology, people may communicate with one another at any time and any place through mobile terminals. Originally, communication modes performed through terminal equipment mainly comprise short messages, multimedia messages and telephones, but these communication modes are costly for users. With the promotion of technologies such as 3G (3rd-generation), WiFi (wireless fidelity) and the like, the reduction in the network flow cost and the rapid expansion of intelligent mobile terminals, a large number of products are developed in the field of mobile terminal communication, which include communication products of mobile terminals (comprising instant communication products, or other products, such as games with an instant communication function).
Unlike such communication modes as short messages and telephones, communication products on mobile terminals may organize users as a virtual social network, in which the users may send text/voice messages and pictures or transfer a number of files with each other, etc., and the information can be arrived in real time as long as the opposite party is online. This type of virtual social network facilitates the communication between people and further reduces the communication cost.
The main carrier of traditional communication products for transmitting information among users is text, which can be provided with simple expression pictures under certain scenarios in order to help the users express their sentiment. The use of an expression picture makes an interaction process more interesting. However, in existing technologies, such expression is often an expression of an individual emotion. For example, when a certain user A sends a “show-off” expression, the opposite party can generally send a “disdain” expression as a response only, and the expressions are independent from each other. This may largely limit the expressions of users' emotions. Therefore, the urgent technical problem to be solved by one skilled in the art is: how to improve communication products in order to help users express respective emotions vividly and enhance a degree of simulation of face-to-face communication between users in a real world.